Nguyen Tan Hoang
Encyclopedia
Nguyen Tan Hoang is a gay
Vietnamese American
video artist and academic. Nguyen's research interests include Asian American masculinity in gay male video porn and Hollywood and international cinemas.
Nguyen was born in Saigon
, Vietnam
. His family left Vietnam in the late 1970s as part of the "boat people" exodus. After spending a year and a half in refugee camp
s in Malaysia, the family arrived in the United States in 1980. Nguyen grew up in San Jose, California
. He received his B.A. in art and art history at the University of California, Santa Cruz
, an M.F.A. in studio art at the University of California, Irvine
, and a Ph.D. in Film Studies at the University of California, Berkeley
. He is currently an assistant professor of English and Film Studies at Bryn Mawr College
.
Nguyen Tan Hoang's creative work has been widely featured in festivals
around the world. Nguyen's artistic agenda is a political one: to create a popular culture for gay Asian American
s. Nguyen often uses appropriated film footage, combining pastiche, kitsch film and music references to speak of his queer
positionality.
Nguyen's writings have appeared in Porn Studies (Duke University Press, 2004), Vectors Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular
(http://vectors.usc.edu), and GLQ (2007).
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
Vietnamese American
Vietnamese American
A Vietnamese American is an American of Vietnamese descent. They make up about half of all overseas Vietnamese and are the fourth-largest Asian American group....
video artist and academic. Nguyen's research interests include Asian American masculinity in gay male video porn and Hollywood and international cinemas.
Nguyen was born in Saigon
Ho Chi Minh City
Ho Chi Minh City , formerly named Saigon is the largest city in Vietnam...
, Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
. His family left Vietnam in the late 1970s as part of the "boat people" exodus. After spending a year and a half in refugee camp
Refugee camp
A refugee camp is a temporary settlement built to receive refugees. Hundreds of thousands of people may live in any one single camp. Usually they are built and run by a government, the United Nations, or international organizations, or NGOs.Refugee camps are generally set up in an impromptu...
s in Malaysia, the family arrived in the United States in 1980. Nguyen grew up in San Jose, California
San Jose, California
San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay...
. He received his B.A. in art and art history at the University of California, Santa Cruz
University of California, Santa Cruz
The University of California, Santa Cruz, also known as UC Santa Cruz or UCSC, is a public, collegiate university; one of ten campuses in the University of California...
, an M.F.A. in studio art at the University of California, Irvine
University of California, Irvine
The University of California, Irvine , founded in 1965, is one of the ten campuses of the University of California, located in Irvine, California, USA...
, and a Ph.D. in Film Studies at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
. He is currently an assistant professor of English and Film Studies at Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr College is a women's liberal arts college located in Bryn Mawr, a community in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania, ten miles west of Philadelphia. The name "Bryn Mawr" means "big hill" in Welsh....
.
Nguyen Tan Hoang's creative work has been widely featured in festivals
Film festival
A film festival is an organised, extended presentation of films in one or more movie theaters or screening venues, usually in a single locality. More and more often film festivals show part of their films to the public by adding outdoor movie screenings...
around the world. Nguyen's artistic agenda is a political one: to create a popular culture for gay Asian American
Asian American
Asian Americans are Americans of Asian descent. The U.S. Census Bureau definition of Asians as "Asian” refers to a person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent, including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan,...
s. Nguyen often uses appropriated film footage, combining pastiche, kitsch film and music references to speak of his queer
Queer
Queer is an umbrella term for sexual minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary. In the context of Western identity politics the term also acts as a label setting queer-identifying people apart from discourse, ideologies, and lifestyles that typify mainstream LGBT ...
positionality.
Nguyen's writings have appeared in Porn Studies (Duke University Press, 2004), Vectors Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular
Vectors Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular
Vectors is an international online journal produced by the University of Southern California's Institute for Multimedia Literacy. Launched in March 2005, the journal's current issue is its fifth, titled "Difference". Through all of the issues, Vectors has featured over thirty scholarly new media...
(http://vectors.usc.edu), and GLQ (2007).
Partial filmography
- A Horse, A Filipino, Two Women, A Soldier, and Two Officers (2005)
- K.I.P. (2001)
- Experimental video featuring images of the maker inserted into classic 70s gay porn footage of Kip Noll
- The Calling (2000)
- Catholicism, homosexuality and “cinematic men of the cloth”
- Cover Girl: A Gift from God (2000)
- The strange tale of DalenaDalenaDalena Morton better known as simply Dalena, is a Caucasian American recording artist known for singing songs in Vietnamese, a language she does not understand....
, "a blond-haired, blue-eyed, all-American white woman who is also a Vietnamese American pop star...A gift from God, she possesses the uncanny ability to sing in perfect Vietnamese."- Crimson (2000)
- A video collage/memoir about two buddies who drift apart, a bit, when one changes gender.
- PIRATED! (2000)
- Trauma and erotica conflate in the revisionist memories of a Vietnamese filmmaker who encountered Thai pirates as a young refugee
- Forever Bottom! (1999)
- Defiantly (and hilariously) celebrates bottomhood while simultaneously challenging dominant myths about gay Asian sexuality
- Maybe Never (But I'm Counting the Days) (1996)
- This innovative short uses pop music to interrogate queer life and love in contemporary society; skillfully examines anxieties, restrictions, and prohibitions in gay life in the age of AIDS.
- Love letters 1 & 2 (For Julian Love, Hoang) (1996)
- Forever Linda (1996)
- Details a young Asian American teenager's obsession with Supermodel Linda Evangelista
- 7 steps to sticky heaven (1995)
- A documentary of interviews with a group of young gay Asian men in San Francisco on a range of subjects; a musing on the politicization process of becoming "sticky rice", a gay Asian male (GAM) who dates other GAM’s
- Forever Jimmy! (1995)
- As a reaction to the lack of sexy Asian men in U.S. media, the film inserts Asian male pop stars into films in a barrage of seductive, fast edits and pornographic intertitles.
- All of his videos are distributed by Video Out Distribution (http://www.videoout.ca/)
External links
- Faculty bio — Bryn Mawr College